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My Way: Speeches and Poems
"Verse is born free but everywhere in chains. It has been my project to rattle the chains." (from "The Revenge of the Poet-Critic")
In My Way, (in)famous language poet and critic Charles Bernstein deploys a wide variety of interlinked forms—speeches and poems, interviews and essays—to explore the place of poetry in American culture and in the university. Sometimes comic, sometimes dark, Bernstein's writing is irreverent but always relevant, "not structurally challenged, but structurally challenging."
Addressing many interrelated issues, Bernstein moves from the role of the public intellectual to the poetics of scholarly prose, from vernacular modernism to idiosyncratic postmodernism, from identity politics to the resurgence of the aesthetic, from cultural studies to poetry as a performance art, from the small press movement to the Web. Along the way he provides "close listening" to such poets as Charles Reznikoff, Laura Riding, Susan Howe, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Gertrude Stein, as well as a fresh perspective on L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the magazine he coedited that became a fulcrum for a new wave of North American writing.
In his passionate defense of an activist, innovative poetry, Bernstein never departs from the culturally engaged, linguistically complex, yet often very funny writing that has characterized his unique approach to poetry for over twenty years. Offering some of his most daring work yet—essays in poetic lines, prose with poetic motifs, interviews miming speech, speeches veering into song—Charles Bernstein's My Way illuminates the newest developments in contemporary poetry with its own contributions to them.
"The result of [Bernstein's] provocative groping is more stimulating than many books of either poetry or criticism have been in recent years."—Molly McQuade, Washington Post Book World
"This book, for all of its centrifugal activity, is a singular yet globally relevant perspective on the literary arts and their institutions, offered in good faith, yet cranky and poignant enough to not be easily ignored."— Publishers Weekly
"Bernstein has emerged as postmodern poetry's sous -chef of insouciance. My Way is another of his rich concoctions, fortified with intellect and seasoned with laughter."—Timothy Gray, American Literature
In My Way, (in)famous language poet and critic Charles Bernstein deploys a wide variety of interlinked forms—speeches and poems, interviews and essays—to explore the place of poetry in American culture and in the university. Sometimes comic, sometimes dark, Bernstein's writing is irreverent but always relevant, "not structurally challenged, but structurally challenging."
Addressing many interrelated issues, Bernstein moves from the role of the public intellectual to the poetics of scholarly prose, from vernacular modernism to idiosyncratic postmodernism, from identity politics to the resurgence of the aesthetic, from cultural studies to poetry as a performance art, from the small press movement to the Web. Along the way he provides "close listening" to such poets as Charles Reznikoff, Laura Riding, Susan Howe, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Gertrude Stein, as well as a fresh perspective on L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the magazine he coedited that became a fulcrum for a new wave of North American writing.
In his passionate defense of an activist, innovative poetry, Bernstein never departs from the culturally engaged, linguistically complex, yet often very funny writing that has characterized his unique approach to poetry for over twenty years. Offering some of his most daring work yet—essays in poetic lines, prose with poetic motifs, interviews miming speech, speeches veering into song—Charles Bernstein's My Way illuminates the newest developments in contemporary poetry with its own contributions to them.
"The result of [Bernstein's] provocative groping is more stimulating than many books of either poetry or criticism have been in recent years."—Molly McQuade, Washington Post Book World
"This book, for all of its centrifugal activity, is a singular yet globally relevant perspective on the literary arts and their institutions, offered in good faith, yet cranky and poignant enough to not be easily ignored."— Publishers Weekly
"Bernstein has emerged as postmodern poetry's sous -chef of insouciance. My Way is another of his rich concoctions, fortified with intellect and seasoned with laughter."—Timothy Gray, American Literature
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
329 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1999
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53 people want to read
About the author
Charles Bernstein
158 books71 followersCharles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets). In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, Bernstein was awarded the Dean's Award for Innovation in Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Brown University, and Princeton University.
Bernstein's highly anticipated new work, All the Whisky in Heaven, will be published in Spring 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Also to be released in the upcoming year is a Companion to Charles Bernstein, which will be published by Salt Publishing, the winner of the prestigious 2008 Nielsen Innovation of the Year award.
Bernstein's highly anticipated new work, All the Whisky in Heaven, will be published in Spring 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Also to be released in the upcoming year is a Companion to Charles Bernstein, which will be published by Salt Publishing, the winner of the prestigious 2008 Nielsen Innovation of the Year award.
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February 27, 2008I am intermittently reading essays from this collection of essays whose performance signals a disturbance of form. Are they essays, poems, speeches? Bernstein builds a useful architecture that's as much an ongoing conversation about modern and contemporary poetics, as it is a rehabilitation and questioning of our seemingly inherited poetic epistemology. Writings of significance are "Robin On His Own," and "Close Listening." The book also includes a couple of engaging interviews, as well as some wonderful retrospectives on the work of Larry Eigner and Charles Reznikoff.
April 9, 2014
Bernstein's essay 'Reznikoff's Nearness' is a tour de force. A 'serial' essay of numbered sections a la Reznikoff's poems (or Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, which Bernstein cites), its form embodies and comments on its positions and concerns.
And there's plenty more to like in this collection. From his late-90s perspective here, Bernstein's take on the internet and related technologies' promise for poetry is pretty darn prescient. The autobiographical interview is edifying too. Plus 'Water Images of The New Yorker' (detailing the prevalence of water-related images in poems published in the magazine) made me laugh so much that I was crying moonlit rivers of tears ...
And there's plenty more to like in this collection. From his late-90s perspective here, Bernstein's take on the internet and related technologies' promise for poetry is pretty darn prescient. The autobiographical interview is edifying too. Plus 'Water Images of The New Yorker' (detailing the prevalence of water-related images in poems published in the magazine) made me laugh so much that I was crying moonlit rivers of tears ...
January 19, 2015
"Of Time and the Line"
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews